jwilzewske: satire

Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Gotham Chamber Opera: “Lexapro… for anxiety, fictional and non-fictional!”

B ecause you're so close you have no choice but to feel a part of it... It’s really visceral!”
— Neal Goren.

A ttended the 10^th anniversary celebration performance of Gotham Chamber Opera last night, at Le Poisson Rouge. Founded in 2000 by Neal Goren, Gotham Chamber Opera is dedicated to producing rarely-performed chamber operas from the Baroque era to the present (including Piazzolla’s 1968 tango opera, Sutermeister’s 1935 ‘Die schwarze Spinne’, Britten’s 1947 ‘Albert Herring’, Haydn’s 1779 ‘L’isola disabitata’, and Handel’s 1733 ‘Arianna in Creta’). As last night’s performance demonstrated, GCO is also dedicated to new music combined with a hefty dose of comedy. Their concert included the première of a new work by Gabriel Kahane, ‘You left me, Sweet, two legacies’, a setting of the Emily Dickinson poem with that first line, performed by soprano Jennifer Check and pianist Neal Goren.

A lso on the program were Opera Company of Philadelphia composer-in-residence Lembit Beecher’s dark, poignant and beautiful ‘Heart Rhythms’ 2008 trio for bass clarinet (Amy Zoloto), violin (Nurit Pacht), and cello (Sophie Shao); Mozart’s ‘Quercia annosa su l’erte pendici’, aria No. 7 from ‘Il sogno di Scipione’, K. 126; Ravel’s ‘Chansons Madécasses’; George Lam’s and Benjamin Rogers’s ‘Variations’; Purcell’s ‘Sound the Trumpet’ 1694 aria/ode celebrating the birthday of King James II [Maeve Höglund, soprano; Gennard Lobardozzi, tenor; Keun-A Lee, harpsichord; Sophie Shao, cello]; Richard Strauss’s ‘Wie schön is doch die musik’ [Benjamin LeClair, bass] and ‘Marie Theres! Hav’ mir’s gelobt’ from ‘Die Rosenkavalier’ [with Eve Gigliotti, mezzo-soprano]; and ‘Les vents furieux’ from Rameau’s 1745 hit ‘La Princess de Navarre’. Gabriel Kahane and ensemble Miracles of Modern Science (MoMS) [Evan Younger, vocals/double-bass; Josh Hirshfeld, vocals/mandolin; Kieran Ledwidge, vocals/violin; Geoff McDonald, vocals/cello; Tyler Pines, vocals/drums] contributed comic and atmospheric pieces as well.

O ne of the works, George Lam’s and Benjamin Rogers’s ‘Variations On’, incorporated fragments of ambient/overheard conversations in public spaces combined with satirical quotes from recent pharmaceutical advertisement voiceovers. The latter were sometimes edited or transformed slightly (as, for example, with the one in the title of this blogpost, for Forest Laboratories’ Lexapro® escitalopram SSRI antidepressant), which makes the quoted material function as commentary on contemporary society—in a manner that is only incrementally more disturbing than the original ad.

T he audience in the sold-out LPR club loved the whole evening. Bravo! Happy GCO 10^th anniversary! Many happy returns!

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Bach’s Polysemy: Happy Ambiguities, Joking, and Civility in Ensemble

Kenneth Cooper, with twinkle of 18th-Century humor in his eye

The prolonged seicento-style harpsichord cadenza in the first movement of Brandenburg No. 5 has been much remarked-upon: it’s said to disrupt or intrusively challenge the movement’s formal order. That seems wrong to me. This past Tuesday evening I had an opportunity to rethink this while enjoying Kenneth Cooper and ensemble perform the Brandenburg Concertos at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater in New York.

[60-sec clip, Berliner Barock Solisten, cadenza, Christine Schornsheim, 2.4MB MP3]

E nergy dipped during the opening movement of the Fifth Concerto, until Mr. Cooper’s mercurial harpsichord solo restored momentum. The flutist Paula Robison and the violinist Ani Kavafian offered dazzling interplay in the closing allegro.”
— Steve Smith, The Gifts of Bach’s Melodic Generosity, NYT, 19-DEC-2007.

T he harpsichord part in Concerto No. 5 is a] wild card in this deck that calls all other parameters of the piece, and their attendant ideologies, into question... finally overthrows the other forces in a kind of hijacking of the piece... Bach composes the parts of the ensemble, flute, and violin to make it appear that ‘their’ piece has been violently derailed. They drop out inconclusively, one after another, exactly in the way an orchestra would if one of its members started making up a new piece in the middle of a performance.”
— Susan McClary, 1989, p. 27.

A rebellious harpsichord solo comes close to wrecking the collaborative process.”
— Susan McClary, 2001, p. 116.

The harpsichord cadenza and the subsequent statements the harpsichord makes seem to me to be a coherent continuation of the No. 5’s musical narrative instead of an interruption of it. Rather than just a two-tiered hierarchy—concertino and ripieno—there is another layer. Each concerto gives a single concertino instrument the most responsibility for virtuosity. In the No. 2 Brandenburg, it’s the trumpet. In the No. 4, it’s the violin. And in the No. 5, it’s the harpsichord. But even with this consistent division of labor, the declamation by the harpsichord in the No. 5 is not a conquest, in the way that some analysts portray it. The flute and violin do not ‘own’ the piece, nor do they abandon their property rights. And the harpsichord does not ‘appropriate’ the piece or ‘steal’ it in the cadenza. No such robbery occurs. The good-natured discursiveness of the various parts’ counterpoint is in fact incompatible with ‘power games’, if the concerto is being thoughtfully performed. The transgressions of the cadenza are joking pseudo-transgressions among friends. Kenneth Cooper’s jovial treatment of the No. 5 Tuesday night (re-)convinced me of this.

The 1973 William Dowd instrument that Cooper played is voiced relatively loudly, but it has a sweet sound. Its color scheme is vermilion interior and black exterior, with an upbeat excerpt from an Alexander Pope poem decorating the underside of its lid.

T o wake the soul / with tender strokes / of Art.

[To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
  Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold:
   For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage. ] ”
  — Alexander Pope, Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato, 1713.

Cooper’s warm touch, the Dowd instrument’s sweet voicing, and the symbolic invocation of Pope’s exhortation to mindfulness, virtuousness, and communitarian ‘be-what-we-behold’ soulfulness—these all conspired to refute the prevailing ‘power games’ musicological understanding of the No. 5.

T he harpsichord unleashes elements of chaos, irrationality, and noise until finally it blurs almost entirely the sense of key, meter, and form upon which eighteenth-century style depends. The harpsichord only allows itself to be reabsorbed into the final ritornello when the alternative seems to be madness.”
— Susan McClary, 1989.

In fact, the prevailing musicological ‘power games’ sense of the cadenza in the first movement of the No. 5 Brandenburg seems inconsistent with Bach’s score. And the ‘power games’ meme is also inconsistent with what it feels like, to play in ensemble with players who are friends and colleagues and equals.

I n a concerto grosso, the soloist enters between statements of the ritornello (Concerto No. 5, first movement)... almost invariably a virtuosic exhibitionist, the individualism of which flaunts the collectivity of the larger ensemble. It is the active agent in the piece; it is primarily responsible for dynamic motion, for destabilization,, the striving toward and achievement of each successive goal, which the larger group greets and punctuates with a ritornello. The convention itself, then comes with an agenda attached. Given the high value placed on closure in 18th-Century style, we already know prior to any particular piece (1) that the group will represent stability and the soloist, individual mobility; (2) that the two forces will operate dialectically, with the soloist providing movement, desire, and noise, the group acknowledging and appropriating the soloist's achievements; (3) that regardless of the oppositional tensions between the two in the course of the piece, the tonic key area and the group ritornello will have the last word, thus containing or absorbing the excesses of the soloist; and (4) that individual expression and social harmony will finally be demonstrated to be compatible... But the movement starts to present its own problems when the soloists enter. It begins as though it is going to be a concerto for solo flute and violin, but it soon becomes clear that there is a darkhorse competitor for the position of soloist: the harpsichord.”
— Susan McClary, 1989, p. 24.

It seems to me that the harpsichord comes forward drolly and gradually, not belligerently and suddenly. The harpsichord comes forward gradually over the course of more than 20 measures. The harpsichord executes the amazing cadenza and then resumes later with convivial demisemiquaver arpeggios, recapitulating the narrative that the harpsichord part had gently articulated earlier in the movement. The demisemiquavers continue for six measures before the dominant pedal returns. Of these measures, only two contain any chromaticism, and they’re a non-aggressive chromatic descent in diminished-7ths. In other words, this cadenza is in no way a ‘revenge of the frustrated continuo player who ain’t gonna take it anymore’. The harpsichord is not a mere accompanist, continuo-only. But neither in Concerto No. 5 is the harpsichord a terrorist.

Yes, the cadenza is dramatic, but it does give way to reprise the first movement’s cheerful main ideas. And the Allegro finale third movement resumes in rollicking high spirits, perfectly conveyed by the 2/4 triplets. The cadenza embodies multiple meanings simultaneously—it is polysemous, in the way that joking banter between friends is often polysemous. If you insist on taking the text of the No. 5 at its face-value—reading it in a doggedly literal, superficial way—then, yes, maybe it does look like a power struggle, or merely Bach’s way to show off the capabilities of his new toy from Berlin. But instead please consider the rollicking discursive style of it—and consider that the some of the statements may be comedic meta-references to the strictures of baroque concerto form and how those can produce funny, stilted relationships between the voices—and you may see the No. 5 in a different light, as I have. This Brandenburg No. 5 is, I think, Bach’s short, egalitarian, satirical essay on the absurdity of conventionality and conventional concerto politics. I’m happy to be wrong about this. That’s fine! I simply don’t think the No. 5 is anywhere near as serious or irrational as some musicologists think it is.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Mvt. 3, mm 37-42, Berliner Barock Solisten

[30-sec clip, Berliner Barock Solisten, mm 37-78, 1.2MB MP3]

The Allegro finale of No. 5 also has detaché chords on the beat. Such detached chords don’t suit a 2/4 time-signature if the phraseology is longer than eight beats. But this finale is not long-breathèd music. The ‘stateliness’ of 2/4 time is there, surely. But the detached beats, the short phrase-lengths, and the unhurried charm of this movement are typical of a cheery 2/4.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Mvt. 3, mm 43-49, Berliner Barock Solisten

What’s more, the roll-ick-ing tri-pl-ets and demisemiquavers for decoration are entirely in-character for a cheerful, satirical piece. These are the ambiguous, casual gestures of an ensemble member who is entirely ‘at home’ with the other members. They are friendly gestures—not aggressive ‘shots across the bow’ by a renegade or tyrant, but playful teasing by a friend and colleague.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Mvt. 3, mm 50-58, Berliner Barock Solisten

Rollicking, jolly, sporting/sportive, merry, festive, playful, diverted and diverting. Mingling wit and wisdom and exploring their own fancy, Kenneth Cooper led the ensemble to indulge in some lively risk-taking Tuesday night. But, immaculate playing and all, their pace was never excessive. We were not rushed through the high-spirited Allegro so swiftly that there was not enough time to appreciate their wit, nor so swiftly that the joy in their boisterousness was weighed down.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Mvt. 3, mm 59-66, Berliner Barock Solisten

Cooper and the ensemble play in such a responsive manner with each other that they continuously re-earn each others’ friendship, admiration, and respect. It’s obvious to anyone in the audience that the ensemble members are comfortable with each other. They’re compatible personally, technically, and musically—and seem unanimously to look forward to a long association with each other. Balance between the voices was impeccable, and throughout there was cheerful give-and-take between the parts. Not McClary’s imagined belligerence and acquiescence; not fait accompli hijackings and recoveries.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Mvt. 3, mm 67-75, Berliner Barock Solisten

Attentive listening dispels the notion that the harpsichord part is the persona of a passive-aggressive virtuoso or a once-submissive accompanist gone berserk. Will you too discover that the harpsichord part can carry a sense of fun and self-mockery? Will you, too, find that in Cooper’s hands it can be slyly satiric of the culture-at-large and the concerto idiom in particular? After all, humorous or satirical mimicry denotes a confidence and emotional security that enables limits to be stretched and conventional bounds to be declared as absurd, without irreparably violating those bounds. No one was injured in the making of this concerto, nor the other Brandenburgs that were so beautifully performed this Tuesday evening.

I t was the same, of course, as the Brandenburg he he had listened to so often in the past—the same and yet completely different. This Allegro—he knew it by heart. Which meant that he was in the best possible position to realize that he had never really heard it before. To begin with, it was no longer he, William Asquith Farnaby, who was hearing it. The Allegro was revealing itself as an element in the great present Event, a manifestation at one remove of the luminous Bliss. Or perhaps that was putting it too mildly. In another modality this Allegro was the luminous Bliss; it was the knowledgeless understanding of everything apprehended through a particular piece of knowledge; it was undifferentiated awareness broken up into notes and phrases and yet still all-comprehendingly itself. And of course all this belonged to nobody. It was at once in here, out there, and nowhere. The music which he had heard a hundred times before had been reborn as an unowned awareness—which was why he was now hearing it [as though] for the first time. Unowned, the Brandenburg had an intensity of beauty, a depth of intrinsic meaning incomparably greater than anything he had ever found in the same music when he’d regarded it as his private property. ‘Poor idiot’ came up in a bubble of ironic comment...”
— Aldous Huxley, Island, p. 329.

I n effect, each member of the group is an internal coach. This, however, is a problematic role. If you come on too strongly and self-righteously, you may find yourself evicted from the room to contemplate the error of your ways.”
— Abraham Loft, p.185.

N o musical rehearsal or performance preserves its real character when exposed to the eyes and ears of an onlooker... Paradoxically and depending on the character of the musicians, the enactment can become one of bravura display rather than of restraint. Those members who in the privacy of unobserved rehearsal are ready to impose their viewpoints on the rest of the ensemble can—under the gaze of the microphone or the ear of the live listener—present their opinions even more strongly than usual. In sum, an ensemble rehearsal reflects the personalities of the participants, and is true to life only when unobserved.”
— Abraham Loft, p.185.

H ere’s an interesting instrument. I was looking through William Dowd’s essay on the extant Blanchet and Taskin harpsichords in the first volume of Howard Schott’s Hubbard Memorial series. Dowd was describing the Couchet-Blanchet-Taskin (1680-1758-1781) in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and he wrote, ‘The nuts bow away from the gap.’ Aside from the sheer unusualness of this, my interest was caught by the fact that I’m rather fond of deep-plucking-point instruments. There are those who call plucking point the soul of a harpsichord design. A close plucking point produces a nasal sound, a deep one produces a sweeter, plainer sound. It’s the difference between a front 8’ and a back 8’. Incorporated into a full design, plucking point will determine an instrument’s character. Factors influencing plucking point include bridge position and whether the string-band is closer to the cheek or the spine, but nut position is a clear and simple indication. The nut is straight, for instance, on the Smithsonian Stehlin, and it curves towards the gap on the 1769 Taskin. The Stehlin design produces a sweet sound; the Taskin design produces a sound with a cutting edge.”
— Edward Kottick, 1997.

[Cooper got his PhD in musicology from Columbia University, where he is on the faculty as well as the Manhattan School of Music. As a harpsichordist, pianist, musicologist and conductor, Kenneth Cooper is world-renowned for his expertise in the music of the 18th century, particularly for his expertise in ornamentation. As Music Director of the Berkshire Bach Ensemble, Kenneth Cooper has made a tradition of the holiday season performances of the Bach Brandenburg Concerti and has instituted a series of Concertofests in the style of Bach’s Collegium Concerts at Zimmermann’s Coffee-Haus.]

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Subterranean Venetian Epidemiology and 16th Century Compositional Creativity

On 07-DEC-1562, Adriaen Willaert passed away. The musical father to the composers of Venice thus ended his tenure of thirty-five years as maestro di cappella of San Marco, during which he was the chief musical force in the Republic. His artistic legacy had been immense, but his death marked a watershed in Venetian musical history. A fresh generation of musicians was taking command, and their creations can be seen in Antonio Gardano’s publications of the 1560s.

During the last decade of his life, Antonio Gardano continued to publish music of fine quality whose contents reflected not only favorite music of the past but also the work of younger composers whom Gardano befriended. In fact, the 1560s were especially productive, as Gardano’s firm saw at least 187 editions through the press in that decade, as compared with 108 in the 1550s and 93 in the 1540s. Gardano’s repertory was truly cosmopolitan, but any account of the last decade of his printing career must begin in Venice, for it was republican Venice and its flourishing trade, intellectual aspirations, and religious freedom that fed the music printing industry that had been the city’s glory for a century.

Gardano was an active participant in the musical life of the city—not as a performer, but as a friend and supporter of its musicians. After Willaert’s death, the position of maestro di cappella at the ducal church of San Marco was taken up by Cipriano de Rore, who spent a miserable year there before fleeing back to the court at Parma where he had worked earlier. Rore died there on 27-SEP-1565, and thus another giant among Gardano’s composer friends passed on.

Rore was succeeded by Gioseffo Zurlini, a pupil of Willaert, who held the post until he died on 12-MAY-1569.

Other composers published by Gardano who were active at San Marco in the 1560s were Baldassare Donato, Annibale Padovano, Vincenzo Bell’Haver, Gioseffo Guami, Perissone Cambio, Claudo Merulo, and Giovanni Scrofulascio. Madrigals and motets by Donato, Cambio, Londariti, and Rore were assembled into volumes that Gardano printed. Naturally, in the course of their business with Gardano each of the composers visited Gardano’s rooms in Venice, exchanged manuscript pages with him, shook his hand, descended his dark stairways, drank glasses of wine in his company, breathed his air. Mysteriously, each in turn contracted a progressive illness. One by one, the life of each was snuffed out.

Two doges also succumbed. Girolamo Priuli was elected in 1559. He was succeeded in 1567 by Pietro Loredan, who survived until 1570.

The houses of the wealthy were likewise decimated. A description of music at social gatherings in Venice can be found in Gardano’s dedicatory letter to Marco Trevisan in Willaert’s book of six-voice motets, published in 1542. In this letter Garano asks that Willaert’s motets be performed at Trevisano’s “most honored salon, where the finest performers play and sing the best music with the most noble of personages in attendance.” The contaminated music that Gardano printed and the printer himself were undoubtedly present at these gatherings.

Even the artist Titian may have met his end as a result of his business dealings with Gardano. Titian was completing a magnificent painting of the Annunciation for Gardano’s parish church, the sanctuary beneath whose pavement Gardano himself was to be laid to rest in 1569. In late 1568, Titian was taken ill with a strange inflammation that began in his fingers, ascended to his elbows by 1570, reached his throat by 1573, and finished him off in 1576. Immediately after Titian’s own death, his son and pictorial assistant, Orazio, died of the bubonic plague then raging in Venice.

Attributing the father’s death to the same cause as the son's is an unfounded inferential leap, post hoc ergo propter hoc—an error of careless historians who did not bother to examine Titian’s correspondence (in which he complained for years of his progressive affliction).

In light of recent evidence, the culprit is likely to have been a peculiarly virulent and insidious strain of mycobacterium marinum, known to inhabit the canals of Venice. Gardano’s quarters, located in a disused crypt below the ground level of San Marco, provided an ideal lair from which the mycobacteria could mount their attacks.

Gardano's Moist Lodgings, San Marco, Venice

M. marinum granuloma, 40X light microscopy

How Gardano himself remained impervious to the organism for so long is an astonishing thing—perhaps a fluke of inheritance that only modern genomics could elucidate.

But hold, if you will, your Enlightenment notions of human mastery of Nature and Art in abeyance, and consider Gardano’s eclectic tastes in the music he preferred to print; consider his affinities for the composers he chose to finance; consider his propensity to entertain musicians in his rooms, down in his moist converted crypt in San Marco…

Consider that these inadvertent factors and the communicable illness that was propelled by them may have exerted an effect on the future of Venetian music more profound than any other. Kissing Gardano’s cheeks may have conferred a composerly fate more immutably, more relentlessly than any popular or ducal criticism could ever do. Counting Gardano as an intimate was tantamount to choosing a fate, every bit as much as choosing exposure to HIV might be in present times.

History, of course, is written by the victors. Those Venetian composers who were disliked by Gardano are the ones who survived, who continued to compose until a hoary old age, and whose work is best known to us today. Gardano’s close friends, not so much.